president

This biography of Andrew Jackson is well written and fun to read. The following quotes sum up what the book had to say about Andrew Jackson.

Jackson believed in the common man, not the elite. His presidency supported democracy as he believed it was meant to be practiced, not as the province of the rich and powerful, but as the birthright of ordinary people.

He used his veto power without qualm, vetoing more bills than had all the previous presidents combined. He opposed legislation which threatened slavery, supported the availability of cheap public lands, and refused to recognize the judgement of the Supreme Court regarding the rights of Native American tribes.

I enjoyed reading this book about Alexander Hamilton. He tends to be overlooked or only briefly mentioned in history book; however, he is one of our Founding Fathers and played an important role in the early years of the United States of America.

Here are a few notes from the book:

Alexander Hamilton was too controversial, too disliked, and had too many enemies at a time when adversaries used weapons as well as word to express their views, to be one of the Founding Fathers who made it to the presidency.

He believed in a strong central government, because he was suspicious of the will of the mob.

Alexander Hamilton an aide-de-camp to General George Washington, who was so impressed with the young man’s astute administrative abilities that when he became president, he named Hamilton as the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury.

Alexander Hamilton fought for the federal government to assume the debts of the individual states, and for the establishment of a mint.

His political reputation was soiled by an affair with a married woman whose husband extorted money from his wife’s lover and then tried to implicate Hamilton in a corrupt financial scheme.

Alexander Hamilton would have cringed at the size of the national debt; he believed that a nation’s overall strength came from a sound financial foundation.